The present invention relates to virtual machines and, more specifically, to virtual machine scoping of data on a hypervisor.
Generally, a virtual machine (VM) is a virtualized computing device that runs over a hypervisor. The hypervisor has access to physical resources, such as a processor and memory, and the hypervisor provides virtual resources to the VM, such that the VM is able to treat these resources as physical. In truth, however, the VM's resources are an abstraction maintained by the hypervisor, to which the VM is blind.
Often, customers, which may be individuals or organizations, rent VMs from a service provider. In these cases, an administrator of such a VM will grant permissions to an administrator of the customer associated with the VM, but these permissions likely will not include authorization to access the hypervisor. Occasionally, the VM may require troubleshooting. In these cases, a snap, or snapshot, of that VM can be taken from within the VM, such as by the administrator, where that snap describes a current state of the VM, absent information about the hypervisor. This state of the VM is used to troubleshoot or perform other activities.